I've finished Shadow of Mordor. Save for a week long binge on Borderlands 2 towards the end, I pretty much played Mordor over a month. Steam informs me that I've put about 27 hours into it, which isn't too bad, especially given the generally high quality of the game.
Coming to it directly from a Assassin's Creed game, my immediate impression was, "wow, this is Assassin's Creed. With some Arkham Asylum thrown in and mixed about." Now that I've finished it, I'd reverse the order of those two titles.
At first it felt uncanny how blatant a rip-off it was. But the more I played, I realized this was not a 'tribute' of the cheap Chinese variety, but a mashup of Joan Jett meets Queen variety. Not only have we brought together both sides of the pond in a way that simply rocks, but it almost makes you question why it wasn't done this way in the first place.
So what at I'm getting is that Shadow of Mordor is good. The combat is tight and movement is solid. It's visually beautiful with some great vistas, and has a lot of great collectables that add to the setting rather than just being another thing to hunt to pad the gameplay. And despite being pretty darn easy as a whole, you have to admit that "being banished from death" is the badassiest way to say "nothing really happens when you manage to fail". The story line and atmosphere are really immersive, in the way that Tolkein-based stories tend to be (and you can tell they did a good job, because I had to consult the built-in appendix to make sense of what the hell was going on). Exploring Mordor's adolescent years, before it grew up and became the big bad punk we all grew up with? Fabulous. Even better yet is getting to know Mordor's awkward teenage friends. It's neat to get a sense of who exactly the orcs are and what their culture is like, rather than the mindless and faceless killing we know them as.
And funny enough, it's the enemies of game that make Shadow of Mordor more than BatEzio's Adventures with His Elven Pal. I was skeptical of the "Sauron Army" mechanic, which is a ranking of captains and warchiefs. But I was playing it wrong by deliberately hunting down and eliminating targets. No, the goal is to leave them alone as long as you can, because things get exponentially more intense when you're going about your mission are get jumped by a mega orc with a chip in his shoulder. And then you throw him into a fire, he burns to a crisp, and re-emerges again at the most inopportune moment with bone to pick with you because now he's covered in bandages and his troops now call him "Oruk the Ugly". And you'd think it'd get annoying or frustrating, but instead it just gets fun and you look forward to facing down these resurrected enemies.
Where it really came together for me was near the end, where I was on a mission an encountered a captain I had slain near the beginning of the game. He explained that he too has been chained to the world of the living, and asked for me to give him relief. Whoa. A vaguely familiar face delivering a single line of alarmingly interesting dialogue, and all of the sudden I empathize and understand the enemy better than before, and start to question my character's role in the story.
Good stuff. Very good stuff.
But something's missing, and I can't figure out what. Maybe it's because it's so shameless about ripping off two games I'm already a fan of. The devs, though, have done such a great job and gone to such lengths to seamlessly merge the two that I can't really fault them for it. Especially as a creative I can't fault for taking two things you love and merging them into something unique and good. Still, though, something about Shadow of Mordor left me wanting a little bit more.
Because I try not to be an jerk, I have this unwritten rule in my head that I can't fault something if I can't figure out how it can be improved. It's like someone telling me, "Yeah, it looks good, but could you just make it 'pop' a bit more?" They don't know what exactly they want or what it would take to capture that mystery X factor, and such efforts usually result in making things worse.
So, Shadow of Mordor.
Five out of five, damnit.
-Cril
Don't wanna be your monkey wrench
One more indecent accident
I'd rather leave than suffer this
I'll never be your monkey wrench
All this time to make amends
What do you do when all your enemies are friends
Now and then I'll try to bend
Under pressure
Wind up snapping in the end
Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench
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